


You're It

by 3amepiphany



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 17:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12281298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: It’s a fairly distinct difference between sort of settling with what life has you doing, and what dreams and hopes you’d had violently ripped away from you.





	You're It

**Author's Note:**

> Truthfully this one started round the time we had that missing year. Just a few lines in. I finished it tonight during the final fight and it's late and I'm sorry for any mistakes that show up bc I'm half awake and I actually have to be at work in 4 hours bc episode 114

He was out of breath. 

She smiled down at him brilliantly, having taken a pause in climbing through the branches, the hair that fell too short for her braid (and so framed her face instead) dangling and dancing about slightly. Vex looked upwards again, shifting a foot and moving sideways, further away from him, laughing. Percy laughed, too, though more quietly to himself, and shimmied on up after her awkwardly.

The Sun Tree held many of his fondest memories, as it held the two of them at this moment, playing this odd little game. Tag, or at least a teasingly hilarious version of it: he actually had yet to tap her. It had been a solid twenty or thirty minutes of him coming within inches of her but failing, and he had nearly caught her once when she leaned forward but then quickly pulled herself back so far that she rolled over the branch and disappeared again around the trunk. Around them, the leaves and the tips of the thinner branches swayed in the wind outside of the safe little haven the inner growth created, and she wound around and through these branches easily, up a few feet, then down, and then up again to double back around over him. 

He leaned down to reach out at one opportune moment, and felt his balance shift.

The way the bark felt against his hand reminded him of the time he’d fallen out of the Tree retrieving a kite for a younger sibling, having gripped the branch too loosely.

“Shit,” he muttered, before catching himself on one branch roughly under his arm and another under his feet as they swung wildly a bit - he thought he could gain some purchase so he let himself slide. Unfortunately, his boots slid too. With a silly, flailing movement he wound up on the lower branch solidly, draped across it on his back, arms out and trying to hold himself there. “Well,” he heaved.

Vex slid down and draped herself over the branch he’d first grappled with, peering at him. “You alright?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, maneuvering his hips over and slowly backing himself up against the tree trunk. “This old shrub’s done a lot worse to me when I was a child, though I have to admit I was quite a lot lighter and much more nimble then, and broken bones were more a right of passage than an inconvenience.” Percy watched Vex swing her own hips over the branch she was on, lock her ankles underneath and then fall to the side, which brought her face-to-face with him and upside-down.

He put his hands up on either side of her face very gently for a moment, and then squished them. “You’re it. Though I have to say that I don’t know if I could handle another round.”

Vex righted herself skillfully and came down to meet him, settling in against him; their legs dangled on either side of the branch, and he wrapped his arms around her with a great sigh. “Speaking of bouts of endurance,” she said, and he chuckled, “I once had to spend almost four days up in a tree, as high as I could, because I’d caught the attention of a young and worrisome bulette. The rope I had was very coarse but it definitely kept me sitting upright and on my branch as I got some light sleep in, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to kill it by the time I’d absolutely needed to. Down to two arrows. I caught it full on - pock! - right in the jaw, and then - pock! - again, in the eye. Broke my bowstring. It disappeared. When it didn’t come back after nearly a day I started to come down, only to fall the last thirty or forty feet. I must have hit every branch on the way down. Then I had to lay there until I figured out how to move again, scared that the bulette would come back at any moment because I swear I left a crater at the foot of that damn tree. Broke a couple of ribs.”

“Impressive.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. One time I fell out of this tree and landed right on top of Cassandra. Broke a couple of her ribs.” Vex stifled a laugh, but the sound she made set him off into a giggle fit. She clapped a hand over her mouth as she couldn’t stay quiet anymore. When he had calmed down enough, he said, “If I had to pinpoint the moment she garnered her disdain for my daredevil lifestyle, that would have to have been it.”

After a few quiet moments, she cleared her throat and asked carefully, “When we first arrived here with you, did you… were you worried that we’d never be able to restore it?” And he was quiet for some time before answering; so much so that he could tell she was preparing to recant the question. 

“For a time, yes. I have to admit that I was very afraid that we wouldn’t. There honestly was a time that I was very scared that I’d never see it again, let alone seeing it in the state that it was. It’s a fairly distinct difference between sort of settling with what life has you doing, and what dreams and hopes you’d had violently ripped away from you. But. New growth. New directions. If the Sun Tree and Whitestone can persevere and face a new future, so can I.”

It was her turn to sit quietly, then, for a short time, before saying “I agree, it’s incredibly distinct. It sounds small and strange but I wanted to start a bakery.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“A bakery.”

“Where I would bake delicious food, yes.”

“A bakery,” he mused again.

“I wanted to start a bakery because I knew that if I could have that, I’d never go hungry again. I’d never have to wander and forage again, and I could make money honestly and easily. I could feed hungry people who could use a bite and some care…” she let herself trail off, and he couldn’t stop himself from imagining her, a young and bush-wild thing trying to figure out how she might best obtain one of the sweet rolls on display in a shop window. “I’d rather deal with fallen souffle than falling into the mouth of a beast. How we adjust.”

Vex leaned her head back a bit and to the side, rubbing her cheek along his jaw a bit, and he tightened his hold on her. “For what it’s worth, you are really, _really_ good at all of this. And I’m grateful. You’ve eased my worries. And you can still have that bakery, you know. We’ve got some time to spare here and rest and put down roots.”

“No, I can’t do that,” she said. “That’s so…”

“Below you now?” he offered.

“That’s a bit mean. It just seems so. _Normal_. I guess. Not that it’s a bad thing but I mean, here we have this notoriety and still some work to do later on and it just seems silly.”

He sighed again, clucking his tongue. “Vex, love, listen. It’s still a dream you can attain regardless. Very easily. We can find you a storefront. I can put forth any capital you might need. Mull it over and if you want to make it happen, we can make it happen.” A bakery would do very well at this point in Whitestone’s rebirth and he was already calculating the steps to ensure this could work without much trouble.

Before he could get too deep into thought, though, she asked, “I’ll think about it. But what about you? We’re talking of dreams here, what can you salvage?”

And here he drew a blank. It was easy for him to look back and think about everything he’d grown up hoping for and wishing to do, but it was nigh impossible for any of it to happen now. “Well. I sort of stopped putting stock in that.”

“Liar. Percival, you liar.”

“Okay, yes. I suppose in a way that there were hopes of redemption and revenge, reclamation. Forgiveness.” They sat there, fingers intertwined and listening to the Sun Tree move, its leaves rustling, mostly masking the sounds of the square outside of its sanctum. “Oh,” he said. “There is something.”

“Good,” she said, her voice lilting a bit before becoming seriously pressing. “What is it?”

“Whitestone weddings are traditionally officiated at the base of the tree.” He’d felt her legs swinging lightly, bumping his own every now and then, but it stopped. Percy could feel her try to wrest some sort of reaction from herself and yet keep her cool.

“What do you mean?” she asked finally.

“I thought about becoming a cleric.”

She sputtered indignantly. “Percival.”

“I kind of thought those bloodbaths your brother took were very enticing.”

“You’re such a shit. Why do you keep lying to me? I’m going to knock you out of this tree, you asshole,” Vex said, twisting a bit in his hold and wrapping an arm around the back of his head as if to wrestle with him. It wasn’t a good idea, as he was thoroughly spooked by it and threw his arms back to wrap around the tree trunk instead, and tried desperately to hold onto the branch underneath him with his legs. He screwed his eyes shut and half-hollered, half-laughed.

But she simply maneuvered around to face him, sort of sitting on him with her legs over his and putting her hands on either side of his chest, steadying him. Calming him.

“I asked what you meant."

Glasses askew, and eyes open now, he relaxed a bit and brought his arms down, taking her hands in his. “Vex’halia, I’d like to fulfill a hope I’d had what seems like epochs ago, and what seemed like I’d never get to fulfill. That I’d get to follow this beautiful tradition. That I’d wed someone under this tree, these little white flowers in her hair and a whole future in her smile. That’s something salvageable. You’ve already been complicit in starting the process and I want you to see it through to the end with me.”

“I’m having some apprehension in this being a big deal,” she murmured. “Vax… Keyleth...”

“Shh, I know. I didn’t say it had to be a big deal, however, did I? I can pop off for just a moment, find a cleric who would be willing to climb up here and join us, and it can be done.” She started laughing as he said this.

“Have them just climb on up here. And marry us.”

“Well, yes,”

“Like a little group of squirrels.”

“Yes.”

“Look. I don’t particularly want to be responsible for a cleric falling out of a tree and breaking their face. Can we… plan this a bit better? I mean it’s not that I don’t want to marry you just this moment, but it’s… you know. At this very moment we’re about twenty or thirty feet in the air.”

“Of course. But, you want to?”

“Yes, Percy. If we both want to make it happen, we can make it happen." 

He smiled, studying her face intently. Goodness, if he was ever so glad that there was indeed, something still achievable. It was a bleak thought in his darkest times, but even in the moments when things were calm and manageable he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get the opportunity to love and to be loved again. To see Whitestone return to its glory and greatness, and to the Sun Tree bloom again. But if Whitestone and the Sun Tree persevered, and could flourish now, so could he. Committing this to his own thoughts and passings, it as another fond memory of his for the Sun Tree to hold, just as it held the two of them there.

"Now. C'mon. We've rested. You're it," she said, before smiling at him wryly and tapping him on the nose, then quickly scampering away from him and hopping up and away a bit through the branches.

She left him quite breathless.


End file.
